Another one of my Mom-bought books, this one continues the story of Nina Borg, a medical activist who helps people in dire (think human trafficking) situations. I had previously read the Boy in the Suitcase, I thought last year, but didn't have it on my year-end list, so either I missed it, or read it in the previous year. I'm a bit puzzled about when I read it, but it was fairly recently.

I hadn't overly liked the Boy in the Suitcase, so I was a bit surprised to be reading this one as a continuation of that character and that plotline. Given that this is a series of Mom-books, I shouldn't have been surprised.

This book starts out following two brothers, one a bit reckless, the other who is mistaken for him and has to pay for his brother's sins. A few crazy mistaken-identities later, and we have a gypsy-looking kid from Hungary, travelling across Europe to track down his brother, and Nina trying to save a number of very sick children, and a kidnapping, and a huge mess of her kid's life, though really, said kid is just being a teenager.

I'm not a fan of this character, nor of this series. It wasn't a bad book, nor was it poorly written, I just don't like the genre. If this genre is to your liking, totally worth reading.

Okay, in for a penny in for a pound with this series. I didn't really like the writing style of the first book, but apparently I became used to it in the second book because it didn't bother me as much as it did in the first book, I'm not sure what it is about this series of books so far, but I am finding them more than a little difficult to finish reading. And somewhat frustrating with the deux ex machina happening.

Phooey, I hate the autocorrect on the ios devices, especially when it corrects two words back after I've confirmed it was correct and moved on.

So, the book. Instead of the kabillion characters, the story lines have reduced to two, Cazia and Tejohn. To my complete and total unsurprise, bad things happened in the journeying, foreign creatures are strangely cool with humans, both others are utterly hostile, our heroes escape time and time again from likely death and absolutely certain disfigurement and captivity yet manage to escape both physically and mentally unharmed. It's kinda painful to read.

I'm doing a poor job of explaining my difficulties with the book.

How about the cover of the book has the main female character on it, AND SHE IS WHITE. She's described as "dark-skinned" in the book. Talk about completely and totally pissing me off at that point. Put a black woman on the cover if the character is a black woman. More power to you, too.

Time passes oddly, things I expect to take days take hours and other things I expect to take hours take weeks, it's weird.

And it was okay. I read quickly. There wasn't any plot repeat that series often have, for which I was thankful. I suspect the three books are just one long book broken into three parts for easier publishing.

I have one more book to read in this series. I'm invested enough to to keep reading. If you like Harry Connolly's work, read the series. If you don't know him as an author, read the Twenty Palaces books instead. Those are fantastic.